Can governments copyright laws? Should they?

Principals for a new era
by Cory Doctorow

In setting out principles for thinking about copyright in this new age of technological access to the law, I'm not going to focus here on existing copyright doctrine. Rather I'd like to look at what the essential freedoms are in relationship to law. These freedoms are the ones that everyone ideally needs to have to consult and make use of "the law"; my argument is that computer and Internet technologies enable us to go much further in ensuring them than ever before. Think of them as guiding principles.

* The right to access: First and most fundamentally, people need to be able to get at the law. This puts a basic initial duty on the government not merely to publish the law but to publish it online in accessible formats with the right metadata, so that people can find it and know what it is. We shouldn't exclusively rely on the government, any more than we relied on it exclusively in the 19th century. But governmental online publication is the first step, the one that makes the rest possible.

* The right to distribute: Once primary legal information is online, anyone should be able to pick it up and republish it as they see fit. That could be coordinated with other materials in larger collections, it could be pushed out to mobile devices, it could be reformatted or sliced and diced in some clever new way. Law shouldn't get in the way of people who are taking it on themselves to publish it.

* The right to extract: Then there's the intermingling problem. Anyone has to be free to do what Richard Peters did: to extract the public-domain legal materials and reproduce them. This is a strong principle, and needs to override any voluntary agreements to the contrary. That is, a private publisher shouldn't be able to require that you give this right up if you get the legal materials under digital rights media management with a clickwrap contract. It shouldn't matter that you click "I agree not to tell people what the law is." You should still be free to tell people what the law is.

* The right not to extract: The flip-side of this principle is important, too. You shouldn't be able to make things hard to extract. No one should have to write a parser to strip out that green sentence from the midst of all the red that surrounds it. To the extent that copyrighted material has been so intermingled with public-domain legal material as to make it a significant challenge or to require significant work to extract the underlying material, there should be a right to redistribute the collection as a whole. Whatever the most accessible version of the law is, you have a right to use that version.

One might object that this rule erases the incentive to make annotations. On the contrary, it provides an incentive to make your annotations cleanly, with a clear layer separation between the primary materials that are the law and the secondary annotations that help people understand the law.

* The right to cite: Finally, there's citation. Anyone, of course, is free to use the citations themselves; Oregon basically concedes this one. But to the extent that a citation system becomes a standard (and especially where government requires you to use a particular citation system), anyone should be able to reproduce the necessary citation information as part of their own materials. (West has sued companies that want to reproduce what's called "star pagination"; that is, little flags in the text or the opinion that show you whenever the West case number changes. They've won in one federal appeals court and lost in another.) Otherwise, a standard citation system allows its creator to assert de facto copyright control over the underlying legal materials.

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Pelosi

Competition puts homeopathy on trial

Want to win £10,000? Then prove that homeopathy works in proper clinical trials in which half the patients receive the treatment, half receive a placebo, and no one knows till the end who got what.

The challenge was issued on Monday by Edzard Ernst, professor of complementary medicine at the University of Exeter, UK, and science author Simon Singh, in the wake of what they call a smear campaign against them in response to their book Trick or Treatment, which explores the scientific evidence behind complementary remedies. "We're saying to homeopaths, 'put up or shut up'," says Singh.

The pair are not against complementary remedies. Of those examined in their book, 36 worked for particular conditions - such as St John's wort for mild depression - but homeopathy was not among them.

Homeopaths seem in no hurry to take up the offer. "We have nothing to prove, and certainly not to people with closed minds," says Steve Scrutton of the Alliance of Registered Homeopaths.

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Strange Bedfellows Unite to Fight FISA Deal

Ron Paul supporters, the ACLU and liberal blogs are uniting

Contact: Liz Rose (202) 675-2312 media@dcaclu.org
For Immediate Release: June 18, 2008

Washington, DC — A sham spying deal could be rammed through both the Senate and House this week. It's moving that fast. If we don't stop this, telecom companies that broke the law by supplying mountains of personal information to the government without a warrant will be let off the hook.

A broad alliance of strange bedfellows is now forming to support a campaign to fight the gutting of FISA (The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) with the intent to work together on all civil liberties, constitutional rights and rule of law issues.

The ACLU is joining with activists from the Ron Paul campaign, represented by Break the Matrix, Rick Williams and Trevor Lyman, and civil liberties writer Glenn Greenwald of Salon, and leading liberal bloggers including, Jane Hamsher of firedoglake, Matt Stoller of Open Left, John Amato of Crooks and Liars, Howie Klein of Down with Tyranny, Digby, Josh Nelson of The Seminal and activist Josh Koster to tell Congress that we will not let them ignore the Constitution or give immunity to telecoms which deliberately broke our laws for years.

This group of Strange Bedfellows is mobilizing a broad-based left-right coalition of office holders and candidates, public interest groups and individuals who are devoted to preserving basic constitutional liberties to join in the fight. The goal is to work together to impede the corrupt FISA/telecom amnesty deal.

Glenn Greenwald said, "The Beltway establishment has made clear that they support the Bush administration's assault on our basic constitutional protections and the rule of law. Constitutional rights and the rule of law are not liberal or conservative principles. They're American principles, and this broad-based alliance is devoted to defending them from the bipartisan political class that wants to trample upon them."

Lust for freedom can lead to some pretty strange bedfellows.

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Ten best lightsaber mashups in all of Youtubedom

Comics about China earthquake

Posted by Xeni Jardin, June 19, 2008 5:01 AM | permalink

Beijing-based graphic novelist Coco Wang has produced a moving series of "Earthquake Strips" about the recent (well, really, ongoing) disaster in China. Link (thanks, Marianne Shaneen)

 

Citizen McCain

Judge tosses former NY gossip columnist lawsuit

The New York Times building is struck by lightning in New York June 10, 2008.

NEW YORK - A judge has dismissed New York Post gossip columnist Jared Paul Stern's defamation lawsuit against the Daily News, supermarket mogul Ron Burkle, and Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Stern denied Burkle's claim that he'd demanded money to squelch negative news. The Clintons are friends of Burkle, and the former president complained about Stern's Page Six column. The Daily News reported on the fracas involving its rival.

Stern's lawsuit, filed in March 2007, accused Burkle and the Clintons of trying to defame and discredit him. He claimed the Daily News — along with a publicist and a former Secret Service investigator — conspired with them.

State Supreme Court Justice Walter Tolub said Tuesday that Stern didn't prove his case.

Stern and his lawyer didn't return a call and e-mail Tuesday.

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George Carlin to receive Mark Twain humor prize

WASHINGTON - George Carlin will be awarded the 11th annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts announced Tuesday that Carlin will be honored for his 50-year career as a Grammy-winning standup comedian, writer and actor. The center will salute Carlin at a tribute performance by former colleagues November 10th, which will be broadcast later on PBS.

Kennedy Center Chairman Stephen Schwarzman says Carlin makes people laugh but also makes them think.

Carlin, 71, has released 22 solo albums and three best-selling books. He starred a variety of TV and movie roles and is famous for his "Seven Words You Can Never Say On TV" routine.

Last year the Kennedy Center honored Billy Crystal with the Mark Twain prize. Other past recipients include Whoopi Goldberg, Neil Simon and Steve Martin.

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Increasing Signs of GOP Desperation

An Anthology of the Best Political Opinion and Commentary
From the Progressive Internet -- www.crisispapers.org

By Bernard Weiner, Co-Editor

Given how low the Republicans have fallen in popularity in the past several years -- mainly because of the dire economy, the endemic corruption, the never-ending war in Iraq, the extremist snooping on ordinary Americans, a government that doesn't function well in emergencies, torture as state policy, etc. -- given all that, one would think that the GOP higher-ups would realize that John McCain is heading for an ignominious defeat unless some major policy shifts in the party move it back closer to the middle.

But, no, almost as if they have an uncontrollable death-wish, the Republicans remain locked into a self-destructive separation from the popular will. Either that or they simply are incapable of thinking straight after eight years of sensory-deprivation in the dark CheneyBush spin chamber.

The public in general has moved ahead of the politicians in so many areas: opposing the endless Iraq occupation, tolerant of same-sex relationships, eager to move beyond divisive race politics, desirous of effective regulation of food and product safety, even more supportive of Social Security and Medicare, open to major health-care reform, etc. Yet those in charge of the Republican Party continue to hitch their wagon to the old extremist shibboleths that play well mainly to the fundamentalist and Old South base, which by this time is barely 25% of the electorate.

This status-quo tropism in the GOP may be great for Democrats in the November election, but may be horrifically bad for the body politic in general, keeping in play the worst sorts of divisive, hate-filled rhetoric both for the presidential campaign and the next four years in Congress.

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Jean Schmidt Refuses To Retract False Claim That China Is ‘Drilling Off The Coast Of Florida’

by thinkprogress

On June 5, Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-OH) took to the House floor and criticized Congress for refusing to lift the ban on offshore oil drilling. To strengthen her point, she claimed that even China and Cuba are drilling off Florida’s coast:

This very day, there is indeed the drilling activity off of our country’s coast. Not by our U.S. companies; that would be illegal. Instead, the Chinese are drilling off the coast of Florida, with their new energy partner, Cuba. This Congress has failed to act time and time again. Our oil resources along our coastlines and in Alaska remain untapped in the name of environmentalism.

Watch it:

Schmidt’s allegation is false. China is not drilling off the coast of Florida. Even Vice President Cheney, who also made the claim last week, put out a statement on Thursday admitting that he was wrong:

It is our understanding that, although Cuba has leased out exploration blocks 60 miles off the coast of southern Florida, which is closer than American firms are allowed to operate in that area, no Chinese firm is drilling there.

Conservative columnist George Will, who also made the claim in his June 5 column, today wrote a correction, stating, “[N]o Chinese company has been involved in Cuba’s oil exploration that close to the United States.”

Schmidt and other conservatives are refusing to back down, however. When asked whether she plans to issue a retraction, one of her spokesmen simply replied, “We will have a discussion.” House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH), Minority Whip Roy Blunt (R-MO), and Rep. George Radanovich (R-CA), who also made the false claim, have gone further and defended their statements.

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Meet “Prominent” McCain Supporter Philip “Icky” Frye

by wonkette

Over the weekend, John McCain’s campaign issued the following press release:

U.S. Senator John McCain’s campaign today announced a group of prominent Democratic and unaffiliated leaders and activists who have joined “Citizens for McCain,” a new grassroots effort headed by Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT) to rally Americans of all political parties to support John McCain’s candidacy.

First, an aside: Can an effort that is headed by a United States Senator and former Vice Presidential candidate be said to be “grassroots?” More to the point, can an effort that is lead by a presidential candidate’s own campaign be said to be a grassroots effort on behalf of that candidate? Methinks not. As Wikipedia tells us:

A grassroots movement (often referenced in the context of a political movement) is one driven by the constituents of a community. The term implies that the creation of the movement and the group supporting it is natural and spontaneous, highlighting the differences between this and a movement that is orchestrated by traditional power structures.

Senators Joe Lieberman and John McCain are the very definition of “traditional power structures.” Nice try, boys.

Now for the good stuff. The last person on the list of thirty “prominent Democratic and unaffiliated leaders and activists” released on Saturday is former West Virginia gubernatorial candidate Philip Frye. That is, Philip “Icky” Frye. If you’re from West Virginia, you’re already laughing. If you’re not, let me explain.

Calling Icky Frye a former West Virginia gubernatorial candidate is like calling Gary Coleman a former California gubernatorial candidate. He ran as a joke. He ran for attention. He ran because the incumbent governor, Bob Wise, had been sleeping with his wife. He ran as revenge.

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42 days? Try 18 months

This European targeting of illegal immigrants is hypocritical, draconian and undiplomatic

All comments ()

• by Evo Morales

Until the end of the second world war Europe was a continent of emigrants. Millions left for the Americas: some to colonise, others to escape hunger, financial crises, persecution, ethnic cleansing, war or totalitarian governments.

European citizens arrived in Latin and North America en masse, without visas or conditions imposed on them by the authorities. They were simply welcomed, and continue to be in Latin America. They came to exploit the natural wealth and to transfer it to Europe, with a high cost for the native population. Yet the people, property and rights of the migrants were always respected.

Contrast the European "return directive", to be voted on in the European parliament this week. It imposes harsh terms for detention and deportation of undocumented immigrants, regardless of the time they have spent in European countries, their work situation, their family ties or their achievements in integrating themselves into local society.

The EU is now the main destination for migrants around the world, because of its positive image of space, prosperity and public freedom. The great majority of migrants contribute to, rather than exploit, this prosperity.

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Supreme Court to rule on whether Ashcroft can be sued

A Pakistani man who was arrested after the Sept. 11 attacks says he was illegally detained and beaten. The justices will examine whether high-ranking officials are immune from such lawsuits.

By David G. Savage

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court came to the aid of former Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft on Monday by agreeing to hear his claim that he and other high-level Bush administration officials are shielded from being sued by immigrants who say they were rounded up, abused and beaten after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The court's move stops for now a lawsuit by a Pakistani man who was held for nearly six months in solitary confinement in New York.

The justices voted to decide whether the president's top appointees are immune from lawsuits growing out of their response to "an unprecedented national security crisis."

After the Sept. 11 attacks, hundreds of immigrants, nearly all of them Muslim men, were taken into custody and questioned. Officials feared then that the Al Qaeda terrorist network could have "sleeper cells" in the United States, and that these operatives might have been planning more attacks.

As the head of the Justice Department, Ashcroft ordered the FBI to move aggressively and to use all available legal means to question suspects and gather intelligence.

The government held most of the immigrants on charges that they had violated immigration laws by, for example, overstaying their visas.

Javaid Iqbal, the plaintiff who sued Ashcroft, was arrested at his Long Island home on Nov. 2, 2001. Two months later, he was put in solitary confinement.

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Shortly before the fall of Rome

Investigation Advances For U.S. Attorneys Scandal

By Evan Perez

WASHINGTON -- Justice Department lawyers have filed a grand-jury referral stemming from the 2006 U.S. attorneys scandal, according to people familiar with the probe, a move indicating that the yearlong investigation may be entering a new phase.

The grand-jury referral, the first time the probe has moved beyond the investigative phase, relates to allegations of political meddling in the Justice Department's civil-rights division, these people say. Specifically, it focuses on possible perjury by Bradley Schlozman, who served a year as interim U.S. attorney in Kansas City, Mo.

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Full Metal McCain

Haunted by the ghosts of Vietnam, the one-time maverick has transformed himself into just another liberal-bashing fearmonger

Evening, June 3rd, in a muggy, dragonfly-beswarmed place called the Pontchartrain Center, just outside New Orleans. Half a continent away, amid yet another legacy-smashing fusillade of unsolicited invective from Bill Clinton, the excruciating Obama-Hillary mess is finally wrapping up, in a pair of anticlimactic primaries somewhere over the darkened plains of Montana and South Dakota. But here in the Big Easy, John McCain has chosen this moment to mount his first general-election attack against the Great Satanic Liberal Enemy — who, as luck would have it, turns out to be a Negro intellectual from Harvard who's never served in the military. And this is supposed to be a bad year for Republicans?

You'd never know it from listening to McCain, whose kickoff speech is the same election-year diatribe that Republicans have been giving for decades, one long broadside against those goddamned overgrown Sixties weenie liberals who hate the flag, love the bomb-tossing enemies of America and are bent on the twin goals of ending the system of free enterprise and placing every aspect of our lives under government control. McCain pegs Obama as a man who wants to take America "backward," to the failed ideas of the Sixties. "I'm surprised that a young man has bought into so many failed ideas!" he says, to furious applause. Then, spitting out a forced, ugly laugh that he must have practiced many (but not enough) times in the bathroom mirror of the Straight Talk Express, he adds, "That's not change we can believe in!"

The choice of New Orleans as a launching pad for McCain's national campaign is the kind of leadenly obvious move that people who do politics for a living are pleased to call "sound strategy": For a candidate supposedly desperate to avoid carrying the Bush label into November, this disaster-stricken city is about the only place in the country that offers a striking visual image of a Bush policy that McCain has actually criticized. So the candidate dragged himself onstage here, ostensibly to perform the dreary business of "distancing himself" from Bush by once again criticizing the president's response to Katrina. The Bush-bashing money quote — "Americans have a right to expect basic competence from their government!" — was featured prominently in media accounts.

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Afghanistan: Kandahar braces for Taliban attack as thousands flee

byMark Tran

An Afghan soldier keeps watch as families who flee villages are being searched in the Arghandab district of Kandahar. Photograph: Reuters

More than 4,000 people have fled villages near Kandahar in southern Afghanistan after Taliban forces destroyed bridges and laid mines in a major show of force.

In anticipation of a Taliban attack, the Afghan army today flew four planeloads of soldiers to Kandahar from the capital, Kabul. Canadian forces have also moved in to the region.

Taliban operations on the outskirts of Kandahar marked the latest display of strength by the militants despite a record number of US and Nato troops in the country.

The Taliban push into Arghandab district - 10 miles north-west of Kandahar – came three days after a coordinated Taliban attack on Kandahar's prison that freed 400 insurgent fighters. The lush region filled with grape and pomegranate groves was never conquered when Soviet forces occupied Afghanistan in the 1980s.

Thousands have fled the area, said Sardar Muhammad, a police officer manning a checkpoint on the east side of the Arghandab river. Police stopped and searched every person passing on the road. On the west side of the river, hundreds of Taliban controlled around nine or 10 villages, Muhammad said.

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George Takei and Brad Altman first to get marriage license in West Hollywood

Barbara Kingsolver “Your Money or Your Life”

Commencement address at Duke University

Durham, North Carolina, USA
May 11, 2008

Barbara Kingsolver is the author of twelve books, including The Bean Trees and The Poisonwood Bible.


----------------------------------

The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. The most you can do is live inside that hope, running down its hallways, touching the walls on both sides.

Let me begin that way: with an invocation of your own best hopes, thrown like a handful of rice over this celebration. Congratulations, graduates. Congratulations, parents, on the best Mother’s Day gift ever. Better than all those burnt-toast breakfasts: these, your children grown tall and competent, educated to within an inch of their lives.

"You could invent a new kind of Success that includes children's poetry, butterfly migrations, butterfly kisses, the Grand Canyon, eternity. If somebody says "Your money or your life," you could say: Life. And mean it. You'll see things collapse in your time, the big houses, the empires of glass. The new green things that sprout up through the wreck -- those will be yours."

What can I say to people who know almost everything? There was a time when I surely knew, because I’d just graduated from college myself, after writing down the sum of all human knowledge on exams and research papers. But that great pedagogical swilling-out must have depleted my reserves, because decades have passed and now I can’t believe how much I don’t know. Looking back, I can discern a kind of gaseous exchange in which I exuded cleverness and gradually absorbed better judgment. Wisdom is like frequent-flyer miles and scar tissue; if it does accumulate, that happens by accident while you’re trying to do something else. And wisdom is what people will start wanting from you, after your last exam. I know it’s true for writers -– when people love a book, whatever they say about it, what they really mean is: it was wise. It helped explain their pickle. My favorites are the canny old codgers: Neruda, Garcia Marquez, Doris Lessing. Honestly, it is harrowing for me to try to teach 20-year-old students, who earnestly want to improve their writing. The best I can think to tell them is: Quit smoking, and observe posted speed limits. This will improve your odds of getting old enough to be wise.

If I stopped there, you might have heard my best offer. But I am charged with postponing your diploma for about 15 more minutes, so I’ll proceed, with a caveat. The wisdom of each generation is necessarily new. This tends to dawn on us in revelatory moments, brought to us by our children. For example: My younger daughter is eleven. Every morning, she and I walk down the lane from our farm to the place where she meets the school bus. It’s the best part of my day. We have great conversations. But a few weeks ago as we stood waiting in the dawn’s early light, Lily was quietly looking me over, and finally said: “Mom, just so you know, the only reason I’m letting you wear that outfit is because of your age.” The alleged outfit will not be described here; whatever you’re imagining will perfectly suffice. (Especially if you’re picturing “Project Runway” meets “Working with Livestock.”) Now, I believe parents should uphold respect for adult authority, so I did what I had to do. I hid behind the barn when the bus came.

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Fight the smears

SMEAR: Michelle Obama Says “Whitey” On a Tape

LIE: Rush Limbaugh says a tape exists of Michelle Obama using the word “whitey” from the pulpit of Trinity United

LIE: Blogger Larry Johnson writes “New and dramatic developments. This is a heads up. I'll post the news Monday morning by 0900 hours.”

LIE: Proven GOP sleazemeister Roger Stone says he has “credible evidence that some indelible record exists” of a tape of Michelle Obama using the term “whitey.”

LIE: Blogger: “Tape was filmed between June 26th - July 1st 2004 in Chicago, IL at the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition Conference at Trinity United Church: specifically the Women's Event.”

Continue Reading

No Such Tape Exists

Spread the Truth

SMEAR: Barack Obama's birth certificate

LIE: Barack Obama is hiding his birth certificate

Continue Reading

You can see his birth certificate here

Spread the Truth

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How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic

Below is a complete listing of the articles in "How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic," a series by Coby Beck containing responses to the most common skeptical arguments on global warming. There are four separate taxonomies; arguments are divided by:

• Stages of Denial,
• Scientific Topics,
• Types of Argument, and
• Levels of Sophistication.

Individual articles will appear under multiple headings and may even appear in multiple subcategories in the same heading.

Stages of Denial

1. There's nothing happening
1. Inadequate evidence
• There is no evidence
• One record year is not global warming
• The temperature record is simply unreliable
• One hundred years is not enough
• Glaciers have always grown and receded
• Warming is due to the Urban Heat Island effect
• Mauna Loa is a volcano
• The scientists aren't even sure
2. Contradictory evidence
• It's cold today in Wagga Wagga
• Antarctic ice is growing
• The satellites show cooling
• What about mid-century cooling?
• Global warming stopped in 1998
• But the glaciers are not melting
• Antarctic sea ice is increasing
• Observations show climate sensitivity is not very high
• Sea level in the Arctic is falling
• Some sites show cooling
3. No consensus
• Global warming is a hoax
• There is no consensus
• Position statements hide debate
• Consensus is collusion
• Peiser refuted Oreskes

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Overkill

by Barry Crimmins

Had I met Tim Russert, we'd have talked about sports, upstate New York and maybe some rock concerts we both attended back in the day. Russert seemed an amiable, affable fellow. He was clearly a man who valued being liked. That's why he'd have been as cordial as possible as he fled from me as soon as I changed the subject to Daniel Patrick Moynihan and benign neglect or the police/prison industrial state or the plight of workers everywhere or genuine green activism or the putrid stench of corporatism that permeates the mainstream media and the politicians upon whom journalists are supposed to be reporting.

Tim Russert stayed busy, frenetically directing our attention toward every diversionary flare fired skyward by the murky figures who truly command and control this nation. In a world of amazing stories, all he covered were horse-race politics, scandals du jour and of course, the passing of "national figures." By doing this he showed himself to be worthy of full membership in the Gladhand Social Club that is Washington D.C. When he passed, he was commemorated with the kind of fanfare reserved for the exclusive crowd that sits so close to the action that it can't ever be relied upon for decent perspective.

The media wags that survive Russert are incapable of seeing the absurdity of their overkill of his death. An hour into the maudlin, endless "tribute" to Russert, I found myself relieved that his wife and son were in Italy and beyond viewing range of a shameless parade of electronic narcissists. The surviving talking heads busily inflated their deceased colleague beyond any recognizable proportion. They had more than enough hot air for the task.

As floodwaters rose, wars raged and the economy nose-dived, the MSNBC on-camera wake went on and on and on with nary a mention of the rest of the world. After a few hours, it became rather clear that there wasn't a lot to say about the man except that he was well thought of by friends and co-workers; he enjoyed his life; and he prepared questions that he then asked of the power elite -- who looked upon him as if he were one of them

Again and again we heard about the "likable" Russert. Well excuse me, but I want my journalists to be disliked by at least some people. I want them to be despised by those whose scams they exposed, whose misdeeds they brought to light. As the televised condolences continued, even Dick Cheney spoke well of Tim Russert. It did not color the late TV host in glory.

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Death Rattle

School has child taken away because "psychic" claimed she was abused

Posted by Cory Doctorow, June 17, 2008 10:37 PM | permalink

The administration at Terry Fox Elementary in Barrie Ontario called Children's Aid on Colleen Leduc and accused her of allowing her autistic daughter to be sexually assaulted. They based the accusation on something a "psychic" told the special ed worker who worked with the kid.

"The teacher looked and me and said: 'We have to tell you something. The educational assistant who works with Victoria went to see a psychic last night, and the psychic asked the educational assistant at that particular time if she works with a little girl by the name of "V." And she said 'yes, I do.' And she said, 'well, you need to know that that child is being sexually abused by a man between the ages of 23 and 26.'"

Victoria, who is non-verbal, had also been exhibiting sexualized behaviour in class, actions which are known to be typical of autistic behavior. (See other typical actions here) That lead authorities to suspect she had a bladder infection that may have somehow been related to the 'attack.'

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Targeting Steny Hoyer for his contempt for the rule of law

by Glenn Greenwald

It is now definitively clear that House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer is the driving force behind a bill -- written by GOP Sen. Kit Bond -- to vest the President with vast new warrantless eavesdropping powers and to vest lawbreaking telecoms with amnesty. Even as his office dishonestly denies that he is doing so, still more reports yesterday -- this one from the NYT and this one from Roll Call (sub req'd) -- confirm that a so-called "compromise" is being spearheaded by Hoyer and the House Democratic leadership. The ACLU and EFF held a joint call today to denounce Hoyer's "compromise" as nothing more than disguised guaranteed immunity for telecoms and, further, because "the proposed deal could be used to authorize dragnet surveillance of Americans' communications in violation of the Fourth Amendment."

As a result, there is a major new campaign beginning today aimed at Hoyer and a handful of other key members of Congress who enable telecom immunity and warrantless eavesdropping. In order to raise as much money as possible for this campaign -- far more than the $85,000 raised (and still being spent) in Chris Carney's district as a result of his support for warrantless eavesdropping and telecom amnesty -- we are working to create an alliance with numerous organizations and factions across the ideological spectrum which oppose civil liberties erosions, as well as with as many blogs as possible (modeled vaguely after the ideologically diverse alliance that has arisen in Britain in opposition to the sprawling, lawless surveillance state).

We hope to announce details about the participating individuals and groups very shortly. But given the time pressures, it's vital to be able to have as many resources as possible, as quickly as possible, for this campaign. The more money raised, the greater the disruptive impact will be.

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Habeas corpus

LAW SCHOOL TO ORGANIZE BUSH WAR CRIMES TRIAL

By Sherwood Ross

A conference to plan the prosecution of President Bush and other high administration officials for war crimes will be held September 13-14 at the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover .

"This is not intended to be a mere discussion of violations of law that have occurred," said convener Lawrence Velvel, dean and cofounder of the school. "It is, rather, intended to be a planning conference at which plans will be laid and necessary organizational structures set up, to pursue the guilty as long as necessary and, if need be, to the ends of the Earth."

"We must try to hold Bush administration leaders accountable in courts of justice," Velvel said. "And we must insist on appropriate punishments, including, if guilt is found, the hangings visited upon top German and Japanese war-criminals in the 1940s."

Velvel said past practice has been to allow U.S. officials responsible for war crimes in Viet Nam and elsewhere to enjoy immunity from prosecution upon leaving office. "President Johnson retired to his Texas ranch and his Defense Secretary Robert McNamara was named to head the World Bank; Richard Nixon retired to San Clemente and his Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was allowed to grow richer and richer," Velvel said.

He noted in the years since the prosecution and punishment of German and Japanese leaders after World War Two those nation's leaders changed their countries' aggressor cultures. One cannot discount contributory cause and effect here, he said.

"For Bush, Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and John Yoo to spend years in jail or go to the gallows for their crimes would be a powerful lesson to future American leaders," Velvel said.

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Third term

Was The Media Unfair To Hillary? Here's Our Rundown.

By Greg Sargent

Just what you all have been waiting for: Our long and detailed rundown on the coverage of Hillary during 2008.

This is being endlessly debated right now on television and elsewhere: Was the media biased in favor of Obama and against Hillary? But that's the wrong question, because it's a question about the motives of the press, rather than about the actual coverage.

What we should be asking is this: Was the media's coverage unfair in its treatment of Hillary? Was it more unfair to Hillary than to Obama?

The debate on this stuff has been downright surreal. On Friday, for instance, The New York Times ran a long piece interviewing members of the press on whether they had treated her fairly -- because we are the most objective judges of our own conduct, of course. You'll be surprised to hear that many of these media figures pronounced their own conduct impeccable.

Here's another way to approach this: Let's take a look at the coverage itself.

I've compiled a long list of episodes after the jump where media figures indulged in bogus, unfair, or outright misleading coverage of the New York Senator. While this puts me at risk of being declared the "worst person in the world" by Keith Olbermann, I submit that it's a useful exercise, on the theory that a debate about the coverage should include a discussion of the actual coverage.

Do my examples prove that the media was unfair to her as a whole or worse to her than to Obama? Not really. But taken together, they amount to a startling parade of media buffoonery and mendacity that should have been unacceptable to any reasonable observer -- even ones who supported one of her rivals.

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It's election season

Arlington Cemetary

Oregon man wins Great American Think-Off

NEW YORK MILLS, Minn. - An Oregon man is the winner of this year's Great American Think-Off, a national philosophy competition that gives ordinary people the chance to debate some of life's perplexing questions.

This year's question: "Does immigration strengthen or threaten the United States?"

Craig Allen, of West Lynn, Ore., won a gold medal Saturday after a live audience in New York Mills decided he was most convincing when arguing that the system of immigration and immigration policy is broken. He says it encourages an influx of illegal immigrants and poses a threat to the country.

During the debate, the four Think-Off finalists touched on what it means to be an American and stressed that American identity is evolving.

The debate is held by the New York Mills Regional Cultural Center, a nonprofit organization dedicated to expanding the cultural and creative opportunities of rural Americans. New York Mills is a farming town of some 1,200 people in central Minnesota, about 170 miles northwest of Minneapolis.

The silver medal winner was Deana Cavaliere from Richfield, Minn., who argued that immigrants of diverse cultures have created a mix of ideas that makes America an innovative and wealthy country.

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When McCain Drops Out

by Steve Rosenbaum

When the Republicans choose their candidate on September 4th, there is a very real chance that they could throw the election into an unexpected chaos as they pull a genuine September Surprise.

I think there is every reason to believe John McCain won't be the nominee. Ok, let me say that again. McCain will not be the Republican candidate in November.

Here's how it could happen:

At some point in mid August, John McCain will announce that he has decided that he can not accept his party's nomination for president. The reason will be health-related, and that may turn out to be the truth. Anyone who's seen him on stage these days knows he looks like he's about to keel over. And anyone who's been on a presidential campaign knows the physical demands are grueling and can be a challenge for a young man.

But excuses or facts hardly matters. He won't be accepting his party's nomination.

The reasons are simple. He can't win. Now that Obama is the presumptive Democratic nominee -- the polls all show that McCain's pro-war stance and Bush endorsement make him a lost cause in November. That combined with soft stand on litmus test conservative issues make him an unpopular candidate among the base. I know some Democrats that think the Republicans are planning to let McCain lose and 'sit this one out' so that they can hang the democrats with a bad economy and a war that is a morass. But that just isn't how they play. They play to win every hand -- think about 2000 with a popular Democratic president and good economy and a solid VP running for president. Why did they put up Bush? And why did they fight so hard? Because, you don't ever throw a game. And they're not going to throw this one.

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Vatican bans Dan Brown film Angels & Demons from Rome churches

Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou in The Da Vinci Code. The Vatican said Dan Brown’s work wounded religious feelings

by Richard Owen in Rome

The Vatican has banned the makers of a prequel to The Da Vinci Code from filming in its grounds or any church in Rome, describing the work as “an offence against God”.

Angels and Demons, the latest Dan Brown thriller to be turned into a film, includes key episodes that take place in the Vatican and Rome’s churches. Archbishop Velasio De Paolis, the head of the Vatican’s Prefecture for Economic Affairs, said that Brown had “turned the gospels upside down to poison the faith”.

“It would be unacceptable to transform churches into film sets so that his blasphemous novels can be made into films in the name of business,” he said, adding that Brown’s work “wounds common religious feelings”.

Father Marco Fibbi, a spokesman for the Diocese of Rome, said: “Normally we read the script but this time it was not necessary. The name Dan Brown was enough.”

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Doodles in the dust become fine art

By SARA NELSON

MOST of us can’t walk past a dirty car without doodling in the dust – but Scott Wade has turned it into an art form.

The 49-year-old has made a career out of creating portraits of friends and celebrities in the back windows of grimy cars.

Wade’s "car art" has become a huge hit – not least due to the limited shelf-life of his creations, which simply wash away in the rain.

The Texan was inspired to begin his drawings after moving to a dirt road which coats passing cars in a layer of fine white dust.

What began as an idle doodling of a smiley face has now led to Wade recreating famous images and movie scenes.

It may be a filthy habit but it’s driving Wade’s career.

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Investigation finds widespread abuse at US detention centre in Afghanistan

American soldiers herded the detainees into holding pens of razor-sharp wire, the kind that's used to corral livestock.

The guards kicked, kneed and punched many of the men until they collapsed in pain. US troops shackled and dragged other detainees to small isolation rooms, then hung them by their wrists from chains dangling from the wire mesh ceiling.

Former guards and detainees whom McClatchy interviewed said Bagram was a centre of systematic brutality for at least 20 months, starting in late 2001. Yet the soldiers responsible have escaped serious punishment.

The public outcry in the United States and abroad has focused on detainee abuse at the US naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, but sadistic violence first appeared at Bagram, north of Kabul, and at a similar US internment camp at Kandahar airfield in southern Afghanistan.

The eight-month McClatchy investigation found a pattern of abuse that continued for years. The abuse of detainees at Bagram has been reported by US media organisations, in particular the New York Times, which broke several developments in the story.

But the extent of the mistreatment, and that it eclipsed the alleged abuse at Guantánamo, hasn't previously been revealed.

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Bush is MIA, again...

by Larisa Alexandrovna

Nearly three years ago as people were drowning in NOLA, the so-called leader of this nation dashed eagerly from one side of the country to another -fund-raising for his party- without a moment's care for his fellow Americans in their time of crisis. In fact, whenever a national crisis has occurred, Bush has been conspicuously absent. During the fourth or fifth day of the Katrina massacre and the missing leadership of this nation, I wrote the following:

We have no leadership, no captain at the helm as it were. We are, in effect, being led from disaster to disaster by a headless horseman run amok with stuffed pockets and an empty conscience.

We are here, again. This time in Iowa, where tens of thousands of Americans are without a home, many dead, many injured and once again, during this national crisis Bush is busy playing voodoo politics (This time in Europe).

Here is what is happening in Iowa:
More national guard troops deploy into disaster territory
Iowa in a drinking water emergency
36,000 homeless
Des Moines is mostly underwater
Death toll as of today at 20 (from what they have been able to determine in the chaos)
83 Iowa Counties declared disaster zones

Where is the god-damn president of this nation? After Bush was told on 9/11 that the nation was under attack, he did not even turn around to ask if the attack happened to be nuclear. He ate cake with John McCain while the people in and around NOLA died, begging for help. He is once again MIA in a time of crisis now. Is it that George W. Bush does not consider Iowa, Louisiana, Mississippi, and New York as part of the Union? I remember Kanye West saying "George Bush does not care about black people," and thinking it probably right. But I have come to reconsider that opinion. It is not that George Bush does not care about black people in particular, he simply does not care about Americans. It is that simple. His legacy - on which he often opines with great pride - will be a single ground zero, like a crater the size of the moon, filled with ashes, bones, bodies, and the stench of lies and decaying flesh.

And the media? Well, you don't even have to wonder. Tim Russert has passed and therefor all news will be suspended until further notice.

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Gingrich: Supreme Court decision ‘could cost us a city’

By David Edwards and Andrew McLemore

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich said that the Supreme Court decision to allow enemy combatants to challenge their detention could lead to the nuclear destruction of a U.S. city.

The decision marked the third time that the Supreme Court has ruled against the Bush administration’s handling of the Guantanamo prisoners, The New York Times reported Friday.

Gingrich referenced a Sunday morning story about a smuggling ring that obtained a design for a nuclear weapon as evidence that local judges should have no say over matters of national security.

“To turn over to a local district judge decisions of national security and life and death that should be made by the president and congress is the most extraordinarily arrogant and destructive decision the Supreme Court has made in its history,” Gingrich said.

When asked if the McCain campaign’s argument about Obama’s inexperience would work, Gingrich said that it wouldn’t because Obama is too smart and well-prepared to come off “looking like some guy who’s dopey.”

Yet Gingrich still criticized Obama for his support of the Supreme Court’s decision to grant habeus corpus rights of Guantanamo prisoners - a decision he called “worse than Dred Scott.”

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McKool-Aid!

Ugly: The Future of the Republican Party

by David Michael Green

Republicans are going down.

Let me say that again (‘cause it feels so good): Republicans are going down. Hard.

A tsunami this way cometh, and it’s got GOP loaded in its GPS.

Apart from the fact that the Democrats are about to nominate a black candidate in a still racist white country, there could hardly be a more perfect storm of Republican-focused discontent imaginable in 2008. And Obama’s color may actually turn out to be a neutral factor, or even a net gain. African Americans are going to come out in droves to vote for him, possibly even putting certain Jim Crow states, such as North Carolina, into play for the Democrats for the first time since the civil rights movement. Moreover, young people are going to turn out and vote in huge numbers this year, and it won’t be John McCain who is the glimmer in their eyes. And then there are the angry people — which is just about all of the rest of us — who are going to be voting in big numbers as well. They may not necessarily be voting for Obama, but they will be gleefully voting against anything on the ballot stupid enough to have an R after its name (and there will be one helluva lot less of those, by the way, in 2010 than in 2008).

This is the year in which Republicans are going to come to join the rest of us in their levels of affection for George W. Bush. They are the only constituency whom he hasn’t yet taken over a cliff, but that will change on November 4th. Bush won’t be on the ballot. He will be the ballot. Every angry American (hey, only a record-breaking 82 percent of us think the country’s on the wrong track) will be thinking about how much gas costs, about how their expenses are going up, their income is stuck in neutral and their job is headed for India. They’ll be thinking about two wars turned into twin debacles, and the lies associated with them. They’ll be thinking about the dead bodies, the stink of torture, the tortured reputation of their country, and the people who made all of that possible. They’ll be thinking about the mountain of national debt their kids are gonna have to pay back, plus interest, so that the fantastically wealthy in this country could matriculate into becoming obscenely wealthy. They’ll be thinking about environmental destruction. They’ll be thinking about arrogance and incompetence and corruption. They’re gonna want somebody to pay, and — worst of all for the party of Rove and Cheney and Bush — they’re not really afraid anymore.

As if things weren’t bad enough for the GOP we got a glimpse of their coming horror show on the Tuesday night of the last primary. Could there possibly have been a greater contrast between the prime-time performances of Barack Obama and John McCain? There was Obama, every inch the eloquent statesman, the perfect fit for the crises of his time. And there was McCain, more wooden than a cigar store Indian, less authentic than a sit-com laugh track, unable to even read a speech without sounding like a shrill robot with serious software glitches. Oh, Baby. That’s what I’m talkin’ about. Bring. It. On.

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Increases in the national debt

McCain anger management systems

San Diego drivers appreciate Mexico's cheap gas

SAN DIEGO - If there's pain at the pump in the U.S., Mexico may just have a remedy. A gallon of regular unleaded gasoline in San Diego retails for an average price of $4.61 a gallon. A few miles south, in Tijuana, it's about $2.54 — even less if you pay in pesos.

More and more people appear to be taking advantage of the lower price.

"I used to buy exclusively in the U.S. before gas started really going up," said Patrick Garcia, a drama teacher at an elementary school in San Diego who lives in Tijuana. "Since then, I've been buying all my gas in Tijuana."

The lower prices mean a U.S. motorist could save almost $54 filling up a two-year-old Ford F150 pickup with a 26-gallon fuel tank in Mexico.

The differential in diesel is even greater, selling at $5.04 a gallon in San Diego County and $2.20 in Tijuana.

Paul Covarrubias, 26, who lives in Chula Vista and works in construction in San Diego, crosses the border each week just to refuel his dual-cab Ford F-250 pickup.

"I fill it up with diesel in Tijuana for $60," he said. "It would be almost twice that in San Diego."

Gas is cheaper in Mexico because of a government subsidy intended to keep inflationary forces in check.

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Ex-Clark GOP official pleads guilty in sex case

Murphy faces 2-year sentence in deviate-conduct plea bargain

By Harold J. Adams •

Glenn Murphy Jr., former head of the Clark County Republican Party, pleaded guilty yesterday to criminal deviate conduct in a plea bargain that calls for him to serve a two-year prison term and then register as a sex offender.
Murphy wore dark glasses and kept his head mostly bowed as he walked in the second-floor hallway toward Clark Superior Court to enter the plea.

During a hearing, Special Prosecutor Stanley Levco laid out the facts of the case.

Murphy, 34, of Utica, and the victim, then 22, had been guests at a party in the Jeffersonville home of the victim's sister last July 28, Levco said.

Both men spent the night at the home. When the victim woke up, "Mr. Murphy was performing oral sex on him against his will. He (the victim) was asleep at the time," Levco said.

Superior Court Judge Vicki Carmichael asked Murphy whether those were the facts to which he was admitting.

"Yes," Murphy answered.

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Impeachment

"Media Matters"; by Jamison Foser

Meet Tim Russert

"It's never the question that's the problem, Matt, it's the answer."
-- NBC's Tim Russert

"It's 'never the question that's the problem'? Really?
Spoken like the guy who gets to ask the questions."
-- CJR's Liz Cox Barrett

MSNBC recently began running commercials touting its coverage of "Decision 2008." One begins with on-screen text asking, "Why do people care about politics?" Viewers then hear Tim Russert explain: "It's about the war. Our sons and daughters. It's about the economy. Our jobs. It's about education. Our schools. It's about health care. Our families' well-being. It's about everything that matters." The ad ends with the on-screen declaration: "That's why you care. That's why we cover it."

The serious and high-minded approach to political coverage Russert brags about would be a welcome change from the political coverage for which Russert is responsible.

During this week's Democratic presidential debate, Russert didn't ask a single question about global warming, continuing his longstanding habit of all but ignoring the topic. He didn't ask a single question about the mortgage crisis. (As one Cleveland resident noted, "We've got the mortgage industry's toxic waste scattered all over this city, but Mr. Blue-Collar-Buffalo-and-Cleveland-Marshall-Guy Russert couldn't be bothered with a question about it.") He didn't ask a single question about executive power, the Constitution, torture, wiretapping, or other civil-liberties concerns. But that shouldn't come as a surprise; of all the questions he has asked while moderating presidential debates during this campaign, only one has dealt with any of those topics.

He has, however, asked Dennis Kucinich what he felt compelled to insist was a "serious question" -- whether Kucinich has seen a UFO. And he has asked about John Edwards' expensive haircut.

Funny, Russert doesn't mention UFOs or haircuts in that MSNBC promo.

Russert's performance as a moderator of this week's debate has drawn widespread criticism. Most appalling was his bizarre fixation on Louis Farrakhan.

Russert asked Barack Obama about Louis Farrakhan's praise for the Illinois senator. Obama, who had previously denounced Farrakhan, did so again. Then Russert asked about Farrakhan again. So Obama reiterated his denunciation. Then Russert, (who, I can only assume, was not bothering to listen to Obama's responses) asked about Farrakhan again. So Obama again reiterated his denunciation. Russert, plowing ahead, asked yet another question about Farrakhan, prompting Obama to answer yet again.

Josh Marshall summed up Russert's behavior nicely: "It was a nationwide, televised, MSM version of one of those noxious Obama smear emails."

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quote of the day

"George W Bush has been a great president. The Iraq war has been a stunning success. McCain should be so lucky as to be running for Bush's third term. Then he might have a chance."

- Ann Coulter -

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Senile agitation

Russert had a gusto for politics leavened with affability

By Tim Rutten

Watching the cable news networks in the hours after his death, one was struck by the outpouring of admiration and affection from across the political spectrum and from journalistic colleagues of every sort. It was impossible not to be struck -- once again -- by just how incestuous and claustrophobic the Washington-based nexus of politics and journalism has become.

Thus, in all that gush across four networks in dozens and dozens of voices, hardly a word was spoken concerning Russert's role in the recent trial of Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. That's odd because Libby's conviction on perjury and obstruction of justice charges was, in some large part, based on Russert's testimony. Like former New York Times reporter Judith Miller, Russert was one of the high-level Washington journalists who came out of the Libby trial looking worse than shabby.

Libby testified before the grand jury investigating the leak of CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity that he first learned she worked for the intelligence agency from Russert during a phone call on another matter. Russert took the stand to contradict Libby only because he'd been subpoenaed -- a summons he and NBC had strenuously resisted on grounds of journalistic privilege.

As it emerged under examination, however, Russert already had sung like a choirboy to the FBI concerning his conversation with Libby -- and had so voluntarily from the first moment the Feds contacted him. All the litigation was for the sake of image and because the journalistic conventions required it.

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Will the spending never end?

School pretends students have been killed to teach dangers of drink-driving

By Megan Levy

A school has been forced to defend its actions after pretending that students had been killed in a car crash to scare their classmates off drink-driving.

A police officer in uniform walked into 20 classrooms at El Camino High School in California and announced that several students had been killed in car wrecks over the weekend.

The hoax was intended to teach the dangers of drink-driving.

But the scare tactic backfired when some students, who were not told that it was a stunt for two hours, became hysterical and wept uncontrollably.

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They possess tomatoes

The Web Time Forgot

By ALEX WRIGHT

MONS, Belgium — On a fog-drizzled Monday afternoon, this fading medieval city feels like a forgotten place. Apart from the obligatory Gothic cathedral, there is not much to see here except for a tiny storefront museum called the Mundaneum, tucked down a narrow street in the northeast corner of town. It feels like a fittingly secluded home for the legacy of one of technology’s lost pioneers: Paul Otlet.

PAPER TRAIL The telegraph room at the original Mundaneum in Brussels.

In 1934, Otlet sketched out plans for a global network of computers (or “electric telescopes,” as he called them) that would allow people to search and browse through millions of interlinked documents, images, audio and video files. He described how people would use the devices to send messages to one another, share files and even congregate in online social networks. He called the whole thing a “réseau,” which might be translated as “network” — or arguably, “web.”

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"God."

outside.in Radar Now Live and in Beta

June 16, 2008 at 12:19 pm · Filed under features, news· by john

I’m happy to announce that outside.in’s Radar is now live on the site and open for all to play with. Radar is our new feature that places you at the center of things and shows you the news going on around you as it happens. Like a Facebook feed for local news, it delivers stories near you in simple, one-line snippets, letting you see everything going on nearby easily, and letting you then click off to the individual stories that interest you.

Radar, as the name would suggest, organizes the news in dynamic, concentric circles around you. First it looks for news immediately around you, within 1000 feet. Then it searches for stories in your neighborhood. Then, in your city. And if you’re out in the middle of the desert somewhere, where there are no neighborhoods or cities, it will just keep on going until it finds something, then will ping it back to you. Just like the real thing.

What I like about Radar is that it drastically reduces the work involved in finding out what’s going on around you. No more sifting through various pages to find things near you that are interesting, no more scrolling down hundreds of lines of ledes to find the one story that catches your eye. The whole landscape of local online content is laid out before you in one simple cascade of headlines, along with their corresponding topics and places. It’s the easiest way around to get the goods on your local scene.

You can even take this whole ‘what’s interesting around me’ idea one step further, by specifying which places and topics are of particular interest to you. The feature will make note of that and call special attention to stories about those topics and places as they come on to your page.

Then, once you’ve set your Radar for your specific location and the topics/places that interest you, you can create an alert, to receive instant notification of things going on around you.

Add to this the neighbor alerts feature, which allows everyone to write directly and immediately to the pages of people in their area, and Radar becomes a total readable/writeable local content solution.

And that’s it in a nutshell: Radar! Give it a try now!